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Ryan Cooper | NCAA.com | December 4, 2016

New Year's Six matchups announced

MAC champion Western Michigan is heading to the Cotton Bowl after going 13-0.

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The lineup for the sextet of bowl games — known as the New Year's Six — selected by the College Football Playoff committee has been announced.

The 12 teams for the six games — the Peach Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl — were revealed Saturday.

The participants in the two Playoff semifinals were first revealed, with No. 1 Alabama meeting No. 4 Washington in Atlanta for the Peach Bowl while No. 2 Clemson and No. 3 Ohio State will travel west for the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. The winners of those two games will then meet in Tampa, Florida, on Jan. 9.

The other four games are as follows:

In the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30, No. 6 Michigan will take on No. 11 Florida State. The Wolverines went 10-2 but missed out on the Big Ten Championship Game thanks to a pair of late-season losses, while Florida State went 9-3, ending the regular season with an impressive win against SEC East champion Florida.

As the highest-ranking Group of Five winner, unbeaten MAC champion and No. 15 Western Michigan received an automatic bid to the Cotton Bowl — the first of three Jan. 2 games — and will get a chance to show what it's truly made of against Big Ten runner-up and No. 8 Wisconsin.

The team that topped the Badgers in the Big Ten Championship Game, No. 5 Penn State, will compete in the Rose Bowl after being the first team missing out on a Playoff spot. That game will come against No. 9 Southern California, which lost three of its first four games to start the year but completely turned things around, winning eight straight including a win at Washington.

Finally, Big 12 champion Oklahoma will take on No. 14 Auburn in the Sugar Bowl. The No. 7 Sooners' Playoff hopes were all but dashed by Week 3 after losing two of their first three games, but they caught fire from there, rattling off a 9-0 record in conference play. Meanwhile, Auburn was one of the most pleasant surprises this season after only receiving 22 votes in the preseason AP poll. However, the Tigers come into the game in New Orleans losers of two of their last three.